i just got this book of john ashbery's poems alongside his collages. i remember loving early ashbery poems long before i ever thought of collage, and i never saw his collage, i didn't know he made collage, but the poems were collages, and they did seem like they were talking with someone, of course they were talking with me, but they also seemed like overheard dialogues that reading you both put yourself into them like an alternate place and listen for suggestions of the other side of the conversation, another room in the same house, another more obscure room inside the same room. a shared room that feels familiar and strange. and i think they inspired me to make things from other things, in a kind of suspended or suggested conversation.